Thursday, 18 August 2011

URBAN GROWTH: Issues and Concerns with Reference to Bangalore

On the 20th of July the sociology department of Christ University put up a panel discussion based on papers presented by the students of I BA about a topic which is Bangalore’s most discussed topic being Urban Growth.

It started with an invocation hymn which was sung by the students of 1st PSEng. After invoking the almighty’s blessings we had Rev. Fr. Dr. Jose CC who gave us a brief talk on the advantages of having these talks and presentations. With his talk I am sure every person who sat among the audience had the urge to walk up to the stage to share their views.

After his encouraging talk we started with the presentation. We started off with the PSEng who shared their views about everything they had seen and known through their own experiences. It was interesting to know that they had conducted a survey about mall culture after which they found out that most people like it only because they earn their living through it and yet others said that they liked it because it is the one stop with which you can finish your shopping eating and everything that a lay man needs in his life. In particular the one thing that comes to my mind is that when they asked a man did he like the mall culture he said he didn’t actually care until and unless it gave him the money to fulfill his everyday needs. There was one person in the group who said he worked with the poor people as a coach for free and also shared his experiences about working with them. I am sure this would have made many minds throb on the whole idea of helping the poor people living not very far from our own houses.

We then moved on to the 1st year EPS class. I can’t refrain from mentioning that their speaker did have this unique ability to make people who weren’t actually listening to at least look up onto the stage. They spoke majorly about the issues that people face on road. They had slides run behind them which actually showed us and made us feel the vehicles moving in just inches. They spoke about the once garden city now turning into India’s fastest growing Silicon Valley losing all its green beauty to the fast growing buildings.

It was the 1st PSEco’s turn next. They were the largest group on stage. They had different people talking about the different issues faced by Bangalore today. They threw light upon the growing amount of slums in Bangalore which has very hygiene and literacy conditions because of which people living here are very prone to various diseases. In a slum you actually wouldn’t know what drinking water is and through which pipe the sanitary wastes flow. They ran through a power point presentation which gave us an idea about the living conditions of a slum with child labor, low literacy rates, female infanticide, unhygienic sanitary conditions and all the diseases the world has ever seen. This would make any citizen of India think again about the development it has seen after six decades of independence. Bangalore which was known as the pensioner’s paradise around ten years ago is now known as the IT hub. Life in Bangalore is so fast today that people don’t even have an idea of what is happening in their own houses. This piece of information made everyone of us say oh and that was that Bangalore sees at least 14 lakhs of vehicles being born on road everyday and a survey said that it has around 6 million vehicles running on road today on the whole.

They even brought about the idea of carpooling which will help reduce the congestion on roads to a great extent. Every group on stage made it a point to say that we must use more of public transports which will help reduce traffic, pollution of all categories and also help build a better relation between people living in the same locality.

This discussion brought into light most of the hidden aspects of the fast growing life in Bangalore and the problems faced by it. Every person among the whole around 285 students sitting among the audience would have given the points told by their fellow mates at least once after the session was over. More such discussions and paper presentations will make us aware of what is taking place in our near neighborhood and work towards making our city a much better place to live in with lesser problems and more peace.

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We strive to reach out to the star of perfection through an earnest academic pursuit for excellence and our efforts blossom into ‘service’ through our creative and empathetic involvement in the society to transform it.